Episode 230 (Transcript): Creating Your Future | A Conversation With Jody England Hansen

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener Celeste LaFollette for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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JH: And that’s what Christ asked me to do, being on the cross, the worst kind of betrayal, the worst kind of experience, the worst kind of pain. And he was offering mercy and forgiveness because how could he recreate, how could he knit his flesh together again? How could he create life again if he was limiting mercy, if he was limiting forgiveness?

And that example, recognizing that he was creating a future by being complete from the past by forgiving what had happened from the past is part of what gave him creative power to be reborn.

CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is Creating Your Future: A Conversation with Jody England Hansen. Welcome, Jody.

SH: Hi, Jody.

JH:Thank you. Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

CW: Jody has been on with us before, episode 124, The Holy Work of Activism, and we’re excited to have you back today, Jody. But do you wanna jump in and say anything, introduce yourself before we get into the meat and potatoes?

JH: Well, it was lovely to be on before. I love seeing both of you. Whenever we run into each other, I’m still very much an activist because I’m very much still a Jesus lover and Jesus follower and Jesus wants me for an activist and more than ever people are in need. And so I work with the Utah Suicide Prevention Coalition. I lead suicide prevention training for Lift and Love several times a month, and for many different groups, especially LDS groups. I volunteer to do that. I live in Salt Lake City with my husband in the most beautiful part of the valley. Seriously. I don’t think I could do activism if I didn’t have such a lovely place to live.

And I was raised by very nuanced parents and just feel fortunate to have that kind of background to feel, you know, it was a long enough journey to learn how to find my voice and to keep practicing it. But still, I had great influences to do that.

CW: You sure did. Thank you for that introduction.Thank you for all the work that you do in this space, Jody. I’m sure plenty of people tell you all the time how you’ve affected their lives, but thank you on behalf of so many of us who have looked up to you and read your essays.

JH: Oh, Exponent II–that’s become so much the water I swim in. I’m a perma blogger for Exponent II. That’s very much part of my work. Thank you. You know, that reminded me.

CW: The other day when I was reading the essay that we’re actually gonna be focusing on today, I just went ahead and typed your name into the ExponentII.org search engine.

And I just started reading all of your essays, Jody. And so I really hope if people aren’t familiar with you, that they’ll go and do that because you are quite the prolific writer and it was a wonderful way to spend an hour or two. So yes, thank you for being you.

JH: Oh, thank you.

CW: Well, I’m going to turn the time over to Susan. She is going to lead our discussion today.

SH: Jody, everything Cynthia said, I so admire the work that you do. And so we really appreciate you taking time to talk to us today. And today we’re gonna focus on a specific blog post that you wrote, or at least that’s gonna be the catalyst for the conversation. We’ll see where it goes beyond that. But this season of our podcast, we’ve been talking about change. And as part of that, we’ve been talking about hope. I mean, because I’m a hope junkie and anyone who’s listened to the podcast knows that. But also because I think hope is really key to finding peace, especially when we’re navigating big transitions in our lives.

I’ve thought a lot about why hope works that way for me, and I think it’s because it looks forward. Hope looks forward, and when we’re being pushed forward, which is what it feels like when change comes into our lives, we can feel more empowered when we can keep our eyes trained in the direction that we’re going.

You know, so often when I’m forced into a big change, I’m trying really hard to stay in the past. The past is safer. I know what happened there, right? I know how that story ends. And so, very often I’m working against myself processing change with any kind of grace or ease because it takes me a while to shift into that place where I can lean into hope.

And in May you wrote a blog post for Exponent II that was called Hope is Embracing My [00:05:00] Ability to Create the Future. So that’s what we wanted to talk about today. That post was about how exercising forgiveness can enable us to look and move forward by creating freedom from the past. And I feel like anything that helps our listeners, the women, specifically in the At Last She Said It space, create a little freedom, or if not freedom, at least distance from the past, it can be helpful.

Many of the people that listen to At Last She Said It are finding themselves in some kind of liminal space where the earth has been pulled out from under them in some way and they aren’t sure what’s coming next. They’re keenly aware of everywhere they’ve been, but so often they’re not sure where they want to go next.

And it can be hard. It can be really hard to sit patiently in that kind of space. This season we’ve been calling it the tragic gap. When you’re sitting right on the edge of the tragic gap it can feel so terrifying, for lack of a better word, that it can just make you want to stay where you are.

But it’s too uncomfortable staying where you are. And so it’s a really hard position to be in. So I found one of the paragraphs from your blog post that I thought would be a great place to start our conversation. And this is it:

“I can take as long as I need on the edge of the chasm of the unknown. I can experience the terror of moving into the future for however long I feel it. I can turn again to the past if I choose to deal with that pain. I can create my future, choosing to step forward on a path that I might not see until I’m in the next moment, the next place I step.”

I love in that paragraph, some of the words that you’ve used: I can experience, I can feel, I can turn. I can create. So let’s start the conversation there. Could you say a little bit more about everything, all the thoughts that were lined up behind this post when you sat down to write it?

JH: Yes. I was pulling from moments that I’ve experienced myself where there have been these times when there seems to be something because of practices I’ve had of mindfulness and looking and everything.

But life happens and there’s a moment in all these different paradigms where, at some point, I see that turning back to the past is going to be so destructive and painful, it’s intolerable. It’s like, I cannot keep doing this, but stepping into the future is terrifying. Because I don’t know what I can’t predict. And so there’s this teetering moment, and the visual that comes to mind (and I’ve described it in several essays) but that scene from Indiana Jones. And he’s in that temple, and they’re seeking the holy grail. And his father has been shot by the Nazis to force him to go forward through all of the terrible, unknown things on the path.

And he stands on the edge of this seemingly endless chasm. And he sees no way forward, no way. If he takes a step forward, he’s gonna fall to his death, but his father is dying. If he turns back and gives up or just returns to the past, his father will die. And that’s intolerable. And all he knows is this thing that his father wrote in the clue that it is only by a leap of faith that you can move forward.

And when he is standing there and he is breathless and he’s clutching his chest and everything, that is a visual that really is familiar in those moments. It goes right along with the archetype of Adam and Eve, you know, when Eve has this moment of either seeking wisdom and moving forward or staying in what she knows, but it’s become intolerable.

And that archetype is our lesson over and over. Our lesson is, at what point is what has already happened, no longer tolerable to keep recycling through? At what point are you willing to step forward and step into the unknown? But in that unknown is wisdom. And even the archetype of the angel with the flaming sword keeping them from returning. That’s not protecting the garden; that’s protecting us from insisting on going back to what we already knew because that’s really life ending. And so this moment of stepping forward, and it’s only when Indiana Jones steps forward that he sees the path. It was an illusion that he couldn’t move forward. It’s an illusion that there’s no way to create your future and have power over it. You step into it and then you see, and you overcome the [00:10:00] illusion and create a new reality that is your future. You can move forward and it is terrifying. It’s gut wrenching, and I kind of call it transformational surgery without anesthetic.

You get that there is pain either way, but there’s pain that leads you to wisdom and experience and creation. So many people think, oh yeah, creation. Oh yeah, you wave the wand or you say something and it happens. Creation involves everything about you to get that you have this power to pattern yourself, not rely on someone else telling you because it is only that way that you own your future, that you truly live in your future. So, no, I’m not a masochist. No, it’s not that I’m saying, oh yeah, go ahead and minimize the pain. No, just get, that’s a part of it. But what you gain from that stepping forward, that glorious moment of seeing what I thought was real is an illusion. And what I didn’t realize is real, is more real because I created it. I stepped into it.

SH: I feel like this is so hard for Latter-day Saints though because we are immersed in this messaging, and some of this messaging is over the pulpit and some of it’s cultural, where we’re encouraged to stay on a very distinctive path, right? Or stay in the boat clinging to the iron rod. There are all kinds of metaphors that the Church uses to encourage us to stay on a path that has been designated for us, that if we follow, it will be safe and will bring us safety in this life.

You kind of make me wanna see a whole different kind of movie of the story of Adam and Eve, where Eve is creating a path forward and confidently moving in a direction to create the next place, you know, that she’s going, that life, and that we’re all going, in that story. I just feel like that kind of narrative doesn’t exist for us.

Do you have any ideas about that?

JH: Yeah. For me, again, I am so grateful for the mixture of narratives I had. I was in on those early meetings about Exponent II 50 years ago, just geeky, teenager, just sitting in the back watching, watching these incredible women do things. And that had a life-changing impact because I could see (this is in the 70s, back then we called it women’s lib and I couldn’t grow up in the Bay Area in the 60s and not be impacted by things like this), and I saw these women members of the Church doing pretty phenomenal things while they were also doing things such as raising their children and being in amazing marriages and teaching, you know, just all these different things. They were taking on unreasonable creativity. Against all logic.

And it’s one of the things I wanna talk about, and so I saw that and I also saw, you know, heard the messages that said do this and it will work out. And I saw that it didn’t always work out. And so I guess that kind of exposure helped me see different people are going to be in different places and be talking in different ways. And that includes even the ones that we sustain as prophets, doesn’t mean they’re always speaking as prophets. They’re going to be speaking in whatever experience they have. And so in a sense, this ability to recognize people are gonna say and share and teach and try to persuade in whatever way they are, and they’re always coming from their own experience–that does not need to be mine.

And I would love it, and I think it would be a much healthier institution, if that were an official part of the rhetoric. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. I have listened to conference where I’ve heard amazing messages of, this is your journey and you’ve got the ability to create and we’re here to support you right alongside of messages like, do it this way, or you’re lost. If you stray one little bit, you will never see your family again. You know, this type of thing, side by side. But since, even as a child, I remember when we would listen to conference and the speakers would call each other out. They’d point fingers at each other. They’d say, don’t listen to what he just said. I’m gonna tell you the truth. I saw that in early days. It’s happening now. It’s just not happening out in the open. And so, another reason I love history. I think we need to remind each other, no matter how true something is to [00:15:00] us, it’s run by us as people, and we all know how messed up we are.

So, yeah, it’s hard. I am not minimizing how overwhelming the rhetoric is. It’s devastating and it’s part of the past we keep looking back to.Yes, everything that has happened up to this point is the past. And when we realize there’s something about that, that, wait, I’m realizing that’s not working for me. It’s not serving me to be God-like. It’s not serving me to be powerful. We have that option, as devastating as it is to go, that is something I can realize has happened before now, even if it was one minute ago, I can release myself from being driven by that, forgive myself and others, or wherever, as devastating as that is.

And at this point, I can create a new future. I can step into a new paradigm. I can rip this out of my way of being and be a new way, become a new being. And really, when you look at the most powerful teachings of Christ in our scriptures, and the most sublime sections that keep calling to me are ones that pretty much say that. It doesn’t work to be stuck in, okay, so and so made me do it, or I was told this and it was always the thing I was supposed to do. So I kept doing it and I can’t do anything different. That’s powerless. And it’s also blaming. It doesn’t serve any kind of an inspiring life. And I think God, and when I say God, I mean the multiples of creatures that inspired us to be divine, because they saw a way to parent us into a new life of recognizing, oh, that’s how it’s been so far. Now I can create a new world. Now I can create a new life and now I can breathe deeper. So life through breathing deeper, the inspiration (that’s really the root of that word), is how they became our parents by breathing new life into us. Definitely not by coming through a birth canal.

CW: As you’re talking, Jody, and you’re saying it’s the scriptures that focus on looking forward, I think that’s how you said it, that mean the most to you. I’m just sitting here running through some of those scriptures in my head that you could be talking about. And the first one that came to mind for me is the Nephi scripture. You know, look, press forward with the perfect brightness of hope, with the love of God. It’s just such a hopeful way, I think, of reframing when we’re kind of in this catastrophic place.

A few episodes ago, in fact, I think it was our opening for season 10, Susan and I were laughing about that David Steindl-Rast quote, you know, he’s a monk and he has that crazy saying, each catastrophe is also an opportunity. And Susan and I are like, who thinks this way? You know, who thinks that? Like, do you have to be a monk to kind of think this way? But right there in our own scriptures,I think we kind of have that same sentiment about pressing forward with a perfect brightness. It’s hard and we hate it and also we still have to do it.

JH: Well, I guess that’s part of it. I realize I don’t have to do it. I get to do it.

JH: When I lived in Colorado and I’d been so deeply betrayed by members of the ward and stake that I had served next to, and for nine years. And I was so devastated. I was just heartbroken and just on my knees praying. Like, I don’t know what to do. And, you know, people have power to inflict circumstances on you beyond your control. People do. And that was happening and it was impacting us. And I just felt really heartbroken and just praying like, you know, what do I do? You know, there are so many people I love here that I’ve served with, that have served with me, that I feel have saved my life at times and, you know, and what do I do?

And it was just like, I’m with you. No matter what.

CW: Solidarity.

JH: Go to church. Don’t go to church. Go someplace. You know, I’m with you no matter what or where you go. You can’t stop me from being with you. And when you take on creation, I’ll guide you. And it was a reminder to me that yeah, I can withdraw, I can not show up to rallies.I can not call my reps. I can not be at church holding someone’s hand who’s in mourning. I can just be so frustrated by one message that I miss the chance to [00:20:00] minister to someone. I don’t know. It was like, it doesn’t matter where you go, I’ll be with you. And I realize that when I don’t take on the practice, and this is just me, I’m not saying this is the case for everybody.

It takes a very short time for me to not even be able to stand to be around myself. I really need the practice of creating my life and God is fine with me doing that or not doing that. God’s with me. It’s what kind of life can I tolerate living if I’m not stepping into the creation. And I just don’t like myself that much when I’m not.

But it’s fine when I get my breaks until I can’t stand it and then…

CW: Well, it’s like you said, in that quote Susan just echoed of yours, you know, I can take as long as I need on the edge of the chasm.

JH: Yeah.

CW: So I mean, for you, you said, it doesn’t take very long before you can’t stand yourself, but it’s also up to you, how long you take. It’s up to each of us.

JH: It took me a long while to learn to hear the messages that say, Hey, look, seriously, you don’t have to do anything. I’m with you. I love you. You know, salvation is just existence. There’s nothing to gain, earn prove–anything. It’s all there. And there’s some pretty incredible stuff.

And the inspiration just keeps coming. And I can deny that, or I can embrace it.

SH: I had a little light bulb while you were talking right there. Just a little personal one, Jody. One of the most foundational things that I have experienced about God or learned personally about God in my own journey has been that God is always in creation. In creation is a place where I can reliably connect with the divine. So if I’m moving in a direction that is creating my own path, my own life, why would I ever need to fear that? And Cynthia always says there are worse things than being wrong, but I feel like I will always have God’s support, always in the act of creation.

I think God has demonstrated solidarity with creation as a divine act. And so to me, I have that blessing just in the act itself, in the practice itself, in embracing my life and my journey from a creative perspective. Even just going at whatever happens next in that way, with that mindset, I have to feel like there’re going to be rewards for me there, no matter how it turns out. Everything I make ain’t great. Let’s be honest. Even the Beatles didn’t write a hit every time. Nobody does, but I feel like there is some divine sanction in the act itself.

JH: I really like that and I think we do a disservice when we limit how creation can be exercised. And I think your expression is really expansive of getting that the divine is in all creation.

It could be when I’m sitting with my little nieces and we’re messing with Play-Doh and, I tell you, when I’ve been working in Nursery, there’s nothing better than making worms out of Play-Doh or snakes out of Play-Doh. But also getting that any time we organize anything–thoughts, actions, time, forgiveness–is an act of creation. Hope is an act of creation, right? All of these things are the divine mediums, that God sets the example. They use these things in creation. Empathy, we mentioned empathy. Empathy is creation. Empathy is creating a future with someone who felt no hope. And ‘cause I mentioned I teach empathy as part of the suicide prevention training.

You are creating a future with someone who felt no hope. And so all of these things are mediums as powerful as oil paint on canvas? We tend to, in society, we tend to think creativity is about crafts or physical mediums. That’s a way to practice it. One way. Yeah. Because there are connections in the brain that are strengthened just by the hands taking items and reorganizing them into something new. But creation happens with mediums that we don’t even have the language to describe. And that’s really the example that God sets for us.

In creating our [00:25:00] experiences that lead us forward into the future, saying I’m with you. That’s hope to me.

SH: So let’s talk about hope a little bit more. I want to dive deeper there for a minute. Because there was a line in your essay, a quote from Nick Cave who, you know, I didn’t know anything about Nick Cave until I heard him On Being. So for anyone who’s into, looking for a good podcast. Listen, look up Nick Cave, On Being.

It’s one of my favorite episodes. But anyway. There’s a Nick Cave quote from your piece that says, hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial.

CW: Nice.

SH: Can you say a little more about that?

JH: Well, one I’m so blown away by Nick Cave and I came across the quote that I used in my blog post during a really difficult time of recent cancer treatment.

And so hope was on my mind a lot. And hopelessness would come often. So him basically bringing up how hopefulness is a warrior, hope is a warrior, and just battling the devil to get back down into his hole, you know, it really is a powerful expression. So it got me thinking a lot about, what is it that happens when we are seeking hope or struggling to find hope because devastation comes, it really does.

And what I notice is my deepest God moments, my deepest connections, have been in woundedness, in the trenches, in, you know, the moments where I just feel covered in blood and gashes and mud and everything. And that’s when I just feel this presence and development of the divine.

And it’s not so much that there’s a magic healing, it’s just a presence of not being alone and that this is not the end and that it will not always be like this. And if there is anything that battles the devastation, it’s that kind of hope that this is not the end. It will not always be this way.

And I’m with you. This constant, I am with you. And I thought about the examples I’ve seen, and so often there’s this image that, well, like the very passive images of Christ that everything was happening to him. And he just submitted that way and my experiences with Christ and in really interacting with the wrestle of what, I guess the teachings the example, but also the interaction that I felt with Christ. It’s anything but passive. It is a warrior. There is not this observer thing waiting for life to happen. It’s very much on the field. It’s very participatory and that’s hopefulness. You are not going to step back and allow life to happen to you. Hopefulness is engaging in the process.

Especially when you look at so much of what happens, and I’m saying this from a very privileged position, but you look at so much of what happens in life, it is a battle. You take on being a warrior to advance creation against devastation. And so often we think deconstruction is bad that, you know, people talk about. Oh no, I have to deconstruct my faith.

And I go, actually that’s an amazing opportunity. I think I mentioned before, that’s how cancer treatment works. It’s deconstructing what is there. To reconstruct what is healthy. Because in the deconstruction, you know, whether it’s chemo or radiation or surgery, the deconstruction is the attempt to remove the cancer, the adversary, and get to the place where the healthy part or the hopeful part can rebuild.

And I think hopefulness being a part in that, so that hopefulness in the deconstruction is also a part to get to the point of reconstruction or creation of what comes in the future. And so often people say, how do you go back? Well, there’s, no, you don’t go back. There is no hope in going back.

The hope is in seeing, okay, this is what is, so this is what has happened. And now moving forward here is how we get to the powerful creation. And sometimes that requires deconstruction. Sometimes that takes the surgery, the destructive chemo, the radiation, so that the healthy cells can overcome and move forward.

And Christ was an example of that over and over. The devastating message of Christ is I [00:30:00] get it, and now come forward with me to the complete destruction, to the point of rebirth. And that is probably a pretty powerful, the most powerful example I can imagine. The most adversarial you could go.

It’s just, I am not gonna sit by and wait for life to consume me. I’m gonna participate and make my future happen.

SH: I love the way you talk about that because it makes hope seem like a very active thing and like I have a role in it. I mean, I think there are a lot of people maybe who come to places in their life where they think, well, I don’t feel any hope, so where does that leave me? And don’t even feel like they would know where or how to access that. So when we talk about hope as being something that’s more active, then I think it empowers people to even look for hope or to even, you know, expect to be able to find that as they start to move.

I love that you put Jesus in this position because we really do see Jesus go all the way to the end. It goes all the way to the bottom. Right. And I think that’s the point of the story really for us, is that we do see Jesus do that and then comes the rebirth, but not until after the devastation, not until after the deconstruction.

JH: Yeah. We wanna skip to that.

SH: Of course we do.

JH: We wanna skip to Easter morning.

SH: Always. We hope if we believe in that resurrection, that we don’t have to go through the other stuff. We hope it’s gonna protect us from that.

JH: Let’s just skip over that, please.

JH: Exactly. You know, if you read some of the Exponent II blog posts, I wrote a recent one in April when I was in London. I arrived in London the Thursday of Holy Week, and my sister got us into the old chapel in the Tower of London, which is, the new chapel, is 500 years old. The old chapel is a thousand years old.

And she knows the clergy there and everything, so we were one of about 20 people who could go to the Maundy Thursday service that night.

SH: Awesome. I’m so jealous.

JH: Oh my gosh. It was just incredible. And I did write a blog post on it, but so many times that are frustrating, ‘cause again, in the 60s in the Bay Area I remember participating in Holy Week ceremonies with our ward. They observed certain things, but so many churches have a liturgy of the entire Holy Week. That includes the darkness, that includes the death, that includes the deconstruction, that includes the devastation. So that the Easter morning hope, it truly is this acknowledgement of powerful creation from the place of total destruction. The leaving behind of the old and the birth of the new. And that service was such a powerful, you know, it on MaundyThursday. It’s where they acknowledged the institution of the sacrament at the last Supper and the washing of the feet. And the Bishop of London is the one, she is the one, that did that there.

And it’s just fascinating how that process, just the ceremony of it, I have this great appreciation of what ritual does to call our, as you mentioned, the liminal space. We step into a liminal space in ritual where the pattern of it takes our brain to a place of seeing what we couldn’t see before.

So ritual can be real–the moment I start seeing it is true or needing to believe something, I lose that ability. But liminal space of ritual is meant to take us to a place of awareness when we can set aside belief or reality or anything. But take us to a place where the ritual itself takes us to an awareness we couldn’t see before.

And that’s what happened. That place of foot washing, of taking emblems, of going through these motions with the most gorgeous choir music from this nine person choir. Just amazing. I feel so fortunate to have been there. It was just amazing. So those moments of the darkness, the depth, the descent, the woundedness of Holy Week to come to the Easter morning is very symbolic of this, the hope of creation.

SH: Yeah. I have a good friend who is an Episcopal deacon, and every time that we approach Holy Week, I see this sort of heaviness descend on him. And he always tells me, oh, this time of year is so hard at [00:35:00] church. It’s really hard. It’s really heavy. And, I mean, I’ve watched this pattern over a few years with him, and the first time I was pretty confused by it. I thought, well, like how can Easter be sad? I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but I have come to really wish that we had that, you know, that my religious self had been developed in a place where I was taken through that journey once a year.

CW: It reminds me, I know probably all three of us are familiar with that quote by President Hinkley when someone asked him, why don’t you wear, why don’t we have crosses on our churches? And he said, we don’t celebrate Christ’s death. We celebrate his life. And I’m like, okay, but, and I’m sitting here showing my cross to my friends because I totally agree and it reminds me that Richard Rohr, he talks about how you go from order, disorder, reorder. And I feel like as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we love order. We don’t even really talk about the disorder. We love order. But something you were saying earlier, Jody, I wrote down was, is safety the point? And I feel like in order is where our church leaders are trying to provide us with safety.

But is safety really the point of life? I mean, all of us are gonna go through disorder anyway. So I wish that, like Susan was saying, I wish that was part of our liturgy, maybe that heaviness of holy week, because I don’t think, I’ll speak for myself, I didn’t know how to sit in the darkness. And so when I had extended periods of time sitting in that darkness, I didn’t really have any tools, and that’s kind of tragic that we don’t give people the tools of how to walk in the dark.

JH: Same. And did you feel like something was wrong with you?

CW: A hundred percent.

JH: Yeah. And I think it’s a real disservice.

CW: Yep. I wasn’t praying enough, going to the temple enough, reading my scriptures enough. I was making it all inward. I wasn’t enough.

JH: And it’s one of the most powerful images to me that we have, and that is that Christ really did sit in darkness. Multiple times. And what came through it, and we just wanna skip over, we just wanna get over, I mean, even when he’s writing in the dirt, while they’re saying this woman was, you know, they said, caught in adultery–entrapped. Entrapped, because where’s the man? This woman is entrapped–you know, he, I think that the writing in the dirt, he’s kind of descending down into a place of, okay, where am I here? You know, what do I do? What do I do? This is, here’s someone’s life. Right here. And I might be stepping into it being my life at risk.

And so these moments that we fail to really sink into getting how often the example we have–step down into darkness. Into waiting. Into wondering. To emerge into something. The stepping down, the being on the cross, the being in the tomb is stepping into a place where we can be born of something new. And I honestly think each moment there had to be for him as well as us, that moment on the edge of the chasm, not really knowing or not really seeing until the step was taken.

SH: Wow. I wish I knew how to give that to everyone but I had to come to it, like Cynthia said, I had to come to it myself by sitting in the dark and being so uncomfortable and just wanting that darkness to end. And thinking that I, that me, being there was a hundred percent an indictment of me. Surely something was wrong with me. And probably always had been, I mean, I really, all of the self-accusation as I sat in that dark place and let things unravel around me was so, so painful. Definitely the low point of my life.

JH: Can you give yourself a moment of grace to get, that in that darkness, each of you, you were being Christlike.

SH: It’s like, I can see it now, but I didn’t know how to connect those dots then. And I wish that I had known. That would’ve brought peace to me and understanding, I guess, of what was happening to me and around me if I had, if I’d had the knowledge, I guess, and experience to be able to connect those dots for myself.

But I did not. My life as a Latter-day Saint had not equipped me for that. Whether that was the teachings that were offered to me, the way I had internalized them, you know, my lifetime of experiences. I don’t know. I was unprepared.

JH: And that’s a part of past that has brought you to realizing it here. [00:40:00] And that’s pretty powerful.

SH: That’s been transformational for me. But also not overnight, you know, it’s taken a lot of patience and willingness to sit and get some understanding about those things. But that’s hard too, because when you feel so in the wrong, you don’t wanna stay there, right? That feels wrong to stay there.

Getting comfortable in that place, on that edge of the chasm, can really be hard.

So let’s shift the conversation for a second and talk about mercy. I feel like it’s a word that we don’t hear enough except when we hear it in terms of justice and then justice is what we usually talk about, right? Let’s talk about mercy.

JH: Justice is easy. There’s a formula to justice, right? It’s really easy to turn it into a formula. And there is mysticism in mercy. And the mysticism in mercy is what is transformational. One of the most devastatingly, even terrifying, statements of the example of Christ when he is on the cross and he says, forgive them for they know not what they do.

And I just think, oh gosh talk about gut-wrenching. Because over and over I’m always looking at, okay, where am I compartmentalizing? What has inspired me about the accounts of Christ and the archetypes he sets up and which ones do I wanna dismiss as, oh, that, that’s just a one-off on him and which ones are the, you know, come follow me and be transformed.

And it’s really tempting to just dismiss the mercy. He was the merciful one. I don’t need to be. And what I found is the thing that’s terrifying is somehow I will not receive mercy. And the more I, this is one of the things that it was kind of one of those God moments I had, where it’s everything that you desire increases when you give it away.

So love, forgiveness, mercy. And what I experienced is stuck in my relationships with some family members that had really caused a lot of pain to me and several others that I cared about. And specifically one. And I was adapting my life to justify really being upset at this person and limiting exposure and everything.

And it was not to the point where it was not like there was a risk of abuse, and so you stay away from that. Not like that. This was different. And it was not long after my father had passed and I was really missing a lot of his influence and his being able to just sit and talk with him and wrestle with things with him and feel like, okay, I can talk about this.

And what it was doing was getting me to turn more to wrestling with God about it. And what I felt is, you need, for peace here, for freedom here, for a future here, create forgiveness. And I thought, well, okay, yeah, I can forgive him. And everything that was, and something was there like, nuh uh, you go and ask for forgiveness. And that was the most gut-wrenching, terrifying thing to go and ask for forgiveness from someone who had caused me pain. Because I had to get to the point where, you know, and here’s the darkness, here’s the depths. I had to get to a point to realize that my frustration, my change in the kind of person I wanted to be was because I was stuck in judging this person as not being worthy of mercy.

And in that I was in the frame of, there is a limit to mercy and there is a limit to forgiveness, and there is a limit to grace. And it was impacting so many things in my life because I had put a limit on things that I craved more than anything. So to free that it really took me going to him and saying, please forgive me for judging you. I didn’t have to go into any more. I didn’t have to justify it, and I definitely had to let go of expecting him to ask for forgiveness from me. That was the real tough thing. That was the stuck in the past thing. That was the– my past was shaping everything about my future because I was stuck in, I can’t forgive him because he needs to ask for forgiveness or anything.

And being in that place, and, oh, I’m not saying don’t anyone go and do that where you’re in danger. You know, this [00:45:00] was not that situation, but I was terrified. I was shaking. I could barely say the words. I had to get three people involved in supporting me and making sure I did it–not being there but just saying, Hey, you ready to do that? You set a time today when you were gonna do that and everything and I had to have that kind of structure to have the practice and I was just terrified. And the moment and me saying that changed him. And he became a different person and he said, well, of course I forgive you.

And that’s all I needed. I didn’t need him to ask after that, he changed now. Did he all of a sudden become someone who was no longer, you know, irritating and hard to be around and someone I–no. But he became someone I could love. He became someone that I could see God loved. And in seeing that I could see that there was abundant mercy for me, abundant grace for me, abundant forgiveness for me in whatever way it came, because I was practicing offering it to someone that I could not see having it.

And it didn’t matter that it wasn’t coming from this person. It didn’t matter. I experienced abundance of grace and love and forgiveness and mercy in that moment, just by exercising it, just by practicing it. And it changed how I was living my past in the future, and that’s what Christ asked me to do.

Being on the cross. The worst kind of betrayal, the worst kind of experience, the worst kind of pain. And he was offering mercy and forgiveness because how could he recreate? How could he knit his flesh together again? How could he create life again if he was limiting mercy, if he was limiting forgiveness?

And that example, recognizing that he was creating a future by being complete from the past by forgiving what had happened from the past is part of what gave him creative power to be reborn.

CW: Jody, when you said earlier there is mysticism in mercy, now I understand more just hearing you talk about this for the last few minutes. I don’t think I had really connected mercy and grace before, but now that’s kind of helping me understand why it was so hard for my LDS mind to lean into grace when I was in that dark place. So thank you.

SH: Same. Now I’m having exactly the same moment, Cynthia, and actually, I’m wondering if our listeners can hear me on the rack being stretched right now because Jody, ouch. You’re killing me with this experience. I have one that’s so similar in my own life and as I’m applying this going backwards, in my mind I’m thinking it would’ve changed everything if I’d had the tools to do that. It would’ve changed everything about my experience and about my past.

Even with that, you know, like about the experience, even in the past it would’ve–wow. This is one of those times where I’m gonna need to lie down and also re-listen to this part six times after we release this episode. Because this is big stuff. But it also, like Cynthia said, it explains to me why I didn’t know how to access mercy or give any to myself when I was in the darkest place.

JH: Yeah. And boy, do we need it. And who better to give it to ourselves than us? But boy, we struggle with that. We really–oh, it’s hard. It’s so hard. And I will promise you because we don’t always see the results of the devastation and how we offer mercy. I got to. It was a number of years later, but because there was freedom around this person, there was a moment pretty crucial. It was during my first cancer treatment. I mean, it was pretty crucial. But he was in a place where he was invited to be a part of a blessing circle for me. And if I had not done that, I could not have had him be there. And recognizing that kind of mystical, unexplainable, unpredictable experience from years before had laid groundwork so that I could experience, it was a very powerful moment for him to be there. And then it wasn’t that long after that he passed and I was invited to sing at his funeral.

CW: Wow.

JH: Could not have done it. Could not have done it if that groundwork had not been laid. And it was another transformative experience. And so laying the groundwork to recreate or have a new life, it makes it worth it.

On the [00:50:00] rack being stretched. Yeah, I get that. But just in case you’re wondering if it’s worth it, I found it to be worth it. Although I will question that all the time.

SH: Question it again next time it comes up, right?

JH: We’ll question that all the time.

SH: Well, we’re coming to the end of our time, but there’s one more thing I wanna talk about, and that is a phrase that you used called living hopeful love.

And you said this:

“Living hopeful love is not denial, but rather deep acknowledgement of all things, of all existence, being present to it and creating from it into the future.”

So talk to us about what it means to you to live hopeful love.

JH: So often it’s like we’re trying to strangle reasoning or reasons to do something around a logical justification.

So we’re trying to do logical hope. And hope makes no sense, right? And oftentimes love makes no sense. Hopeful love together requires a practice of creation that doesn’t rely on logic. And part of it is just, you know, once again, this mystical experience of just God being able to be present with all things and all times and acknowledge them and be connected to it is this ultimate practice of love.

And when we can acknowledge and be present to everything that has happened, but everything that is possible to happen and create. There is this type of a oneness, an at-one-ment, which is the deepest form of love that is connected to that kind of hope. And what I mentioned before to kind of illustrate it, it’s this essay that I wrote over 20 years ago, but it’s in this new book Making Space for Mormon Thought and Culture: The Enduring Influence of Eugene England.

And the essay I have in there is called A Pope Story, and it’s on the website that has a lot of writings by my father and about him called eugeneengland.org. But it’s called A Pope Story, and it’s about when, in 1981, we were in Rome with a BYU student group. Dad was one of the directors and we were spending just a moment seeing the Pope give the weekly audience before we caught the train up to Switzerland. And it was May 13, and we were kind of clustered in the center and dad said, okay, watch the students, kind of, you know, keep them together. And I’m gonna try to get closer, which dad does. And it was the day that the Pope was shot, John Paul was shot.

And dad was right in front of him. And one of the bullets went past Dad and clipped his finger before it entered the Pope. And so it was very dramatic, and I write about this and Dad was concerned that this was an attempt by the KGB to get rid of the Pope. ‘cause he was this spiritual inspiration for this resistance of the solidarity union in Poland, which was resisting the control of the communist government.

And when we returned from this trip, he felt strongly that we needed to do what we could to support the solidarity union. They were being starved out. They were trying to negotiate for, you know, living working conditions and basically, you know, what’s happening now. And so the thing he felt we could do was gather donations and send them over so that they had food, but he had no idea how to do this.

Here he’s this Mormon professor at BYU in the reddest state of the reddest county of, you know–and we didn’t have money. We didn’t have connections. So he just found reasons to do this because he felt this love of what God had taught, that what happens to any of us, happens to everyone. And he wanted to do what he could to create conditions where they could survive and cause change in their country and the conditions where they needed food and they needed help.

And so he just started talking to people. People would talk to other people and he talked to leaders of the church. For the first time ever, they worked with the Catholic Church to organize donations and make sure they got to where they needed to be. So all these different things, and I write about that and it made no sense at all.

But in the end, solidarity survived. And there ended up being elections and the wall came down, you know, over a period of years. So this story is about how one person brought down the Berlin Wall and changed the world. But the message is that there was every reason for him not to do this. Every reason. [00:55:00] There was a brick thrown through our front window, but, you know, during the, you know, all kinds of weird stuff.

Anyway, but Dad made up his own reasons that were more powerful than the reasons not to, and as I said, the power to create a reason that big, and in this case it was world peace, is the power to tear down walls. And this is the power to create the future. And so who is the one person who tore down the Berlin Wall? And I just name all these people that were involved. But it is each person. It is each person who donated, fasted, prayed, negotiated, led, inspired, or took a stand. The wall was not brought down by millions of people. It was brought down by one person, hundreds, thousands, millions of times. And I think a lot of times this hopeful love is being connected to every single person who can inspire us and support us to be the one person who creates our future.

Because when we get that, each of us is that one person creating, we are in the presence of love. We are in the presence of oneness. We are in the presence of God. And that is that, once again, mystical, that mystical connection that brings the power to hope, the power to create.

SH: Gorgeous. It’s hard to imagine a better story for the time that we’re living through right now.

JH: Yeah. But I find a lot of, I read Heather Cox Richardson every day, and she’s this historian that gives amazing perspective to current news and relates it to the past. And she talks about how frustrating it is as a historian to study and research. She wrote a book on Wounded Knee, right? And just how devastating, I mean, she had to take breaks from it just to keep get– because the devastation of the horrible actions there. And she said one of the most difficult things is that she saw that there was nothing she could do to change the past. Nothing. In her study, she realized if this one person had done this one thing, it would’ve changed the whole outcome.

So what she saw is, while we can never change the past, we can have power over it through forgiveness, but we can always have the power to change the future. So good. And in this climate, that’s more important than ever. One more call to your legislatures. One more person witnessing at a hearing. One more person at a rally can possibly be the one that changes the future. And that’s powerful creation.

SH: Great stuff, Jody. We cannot thank you enough.

CW: Jody, can you pontificate on our favorite question we love to ask our guests, which is, what is one thing that you know today?

JH: The one thing I knew is the only power that transcends everything is love.

CW: Thank you, Jody.

SH: Thanks Jody.

JH: Thank you.

Voicemail 1: Hi Susan and Cynthia. I was just listening to your episode with Abby and as I was listening, I had to pause mid-episode and come leave a voicemail because everything Abby was sharing was just hitting home for me. I really appreciated all her experiences she shared and I wanted to share one of my own as I was a missionary.

I served as a sister training leader for several months, and first of all, I didn’t even know that was a thing until I went on my mission, which I feel like just goes to show how little value the sister missionaries opinions hold. And as a sister training leader, there was a problem within our zone with a group of sisters and we heard about it from the zone leaders.

And I remember feeling infuriated because when there was a problem with the sisters, we as the sister training leaders who were meant to handle that situation were the last to know what was going on. And I felt incredibly frustrated. I was like just thinking to myself at the time, so what is even the point of having us here?

Like, and it just made me feel very defeated. And so hearing these stories that Abby was sharing was just helping me to feel seen. And I really appreciate those little moments of being seen.

Voicemail 2: Hi, Cynthia and Susan. So I wanted to talk about something I’ve been thinking about recently. One of the reasons I really love your podcast is because it has voices from women that are older than I am.

So I’m still relatively [01:00:00] young. I’m only 26, and I fully thought as a teenager that my generation was the first generation to ever care about feminism, which now I know isn’t true. But I fully believed that as a teenager. And on one hand that was comforting because it made me think maybe the reason why the church is still holding onto these sexist things is because nobody’s ever thought to change them before.

And so it gave me comfort in that sense to think that my generation was the first. But on the other hand, it’s so comforting to realize that we’re not the first, that there have been women for, so so long, for longer than I’ve been alive who have struggled with the same things I’ve struggled with and who have had the same thoughts that I’ve had, and it’s just so awesome to be able to feel connected to the older generation in that way.

And I’m so grateful for your podcast. You guys are amazing. I listen to every episode, so thanks for everything you do. Bye.

SH: Don’t forget our website. Go to atlastshesaidit.org to find all our substack content. While there, you can contact our team, leave us a voicemail, register for events, subscribe, or make a tax-deductible donation Paid subscribers get extra stuff including ongoing community chats and live chats with us. Remember, your support keeps the podcast ad free. Thanks for listening.